Caracterização geomorfológica estratigráfica e geoquímica da Planície Costeira do município de Itarema-CE.

Abstract

The Itarema coastal plain, situated at the western coast of Ceará, in the area dominated by the Cenozoic sedimentary cover. This thesis shows the geomorphological, sedimentological and geochemical features of this coastal plain. The Itarema coastal plain is subdivided in two major morpho-structural units: pre-coastal ¨plateaus¨ and coastal plain, that is subdivided into lithostratigraphic units, lagoon plain, tidal plain with and without mangroves, marine and fluvial plain, mobile and fixed dunes, beach ridges, tidal channels, sand bars and beaches. The supply and sediment transport in the area are closely linked to the climatic, meteorological and oceanographic conditions. The sedimentary, stratigraphy, geomorphological and geochemical data have been defined: (1) five lithological units: Lagoon Deposits, dune deposits, eolianits deposits, beach deposits and alluvial deposits and (2) seven lithofacies: mud sandy, mud, Sand mud, fine sand, medium sand, thick sand, conglomeratic sand-clay with different characteristics which have been drawn through the lateral and vertical correlations, thus allowing the interpretation of depositional paleoenvironments related to the evolution of the Itarema Coastal Plain. The analysis of the lithological units allowed the reconstruction of the processes indicative of a transgressive sucession prograded during which the lagoon-barrier system was installed on the system of alluvial fans, the bus of small streams, forming the lagoon plain, it was also noted that the lagoon has undergone changes in their size both by progradation of the barrier and subsequently by the deposition of sediments within the same wind. The Itarema coastal plain presents physiographic features of an coastal promontory or embaiments of central nuclei as a spiral, that would have provided the evolution to the current environment and the current model of coastline with beaches of the barrier beach-type and suggests that is occurring repetition in the construction of comparative morphology morphogenetic active in the region's past.